The "battle scrolls" certainly redefine all of the existing Warhammer Fantasy units in ways compatible with the Age of Sigmar system.

They also graft ridiculous rules onto them, in a gesture of naked contempt for the players. Lo:

Bretonnia: Grail KnightsThe Grail Vow: You can re-roll all failed hit rolls for this unit if, before rolling the dice, you hold aloft a grail or goblet and shout ‘For the Lady’ in a heroic voice.

Dwarves: Dwarf Thane with Battle StandardHonour of the Clan: It is a Thane’s duty to uphold the honour of his clan, and his fighting prowess is as deadly as his beard is magnificent. You can re-roll any failed hit rolls when attacking with a Thane so long as you have a bigger and more impressive beard than your opponent.

Ogre Kingdoms: Greasus GoldtoothEveryone Has Their Price: If Greasus Goldtooth uses this ability, select an enemy unit anywhere on the battlefield and choose one of the effects listed below ... Then, offer your opponent a bribe (this can be anything you want to offer). If your opponent accepts your bribe, the chosen effect takes place – otherwise, nothing happens. Players are free to haggle over the offered bribe, or propose a counter-offer...

Orcs and Goblins: Ruglud's Armoured OrcsWaaagh! Drummer: Models in this unit may be Waaagh! Drummers. You can add 2 to the charge rolls of a unit that includes any Waaagh! Drummers, but only if you bellow ‘Waaagh!’ when rolling the dice.

The Empire: Marius LeitdorfThe Mad Count: Marius Leitdorf is an exceptional swordsman, even if he is totally insane. If, during your hero phase, you pretend to ride an imaginary horse, you can re-roll failed hit rolls for the Averland Runefang until your next hero phase. If you actually talk to your imaginary horse you can re-roll failed wound rolls as well.

At best there's a "game construction kit", with four pages of rules and no points/army construction rules/balancing mechanism of any kind.

If you're willing to do quite a lot of work devising a balancing mechanism you'll THEN have a very shallow tabletop game that consistently devolves into a giant mass in the center of the board. Manoeuver, flanking, all gone.

The clock is now ticking down the last days of Warhammer, before GW jettisons the whole money-losing lot. Age of Sigmar is like "Dreadfleet 2"; they'll be dumping the unsold stock into landfill.

Far better than devising your own rules to make this Age of Sigmar travesty sort-of function, is to go with one of the established alternate systems. Kings of War, whose second edition is coming out in August and was created by former GW game designers, is about to see its sales skyrocket.

I honestly don't understand why people think the Sigmar rules are "lite." They are really more like "concise." I think people just don't see it because the bulk of the rules have been moved to the warscrolls. Sure, a lot of awkward barnacles have finally been scraped away (rank & file and too many associated movement issues; 17 types of psychology and associated movement issues; etc.), but there are actually a lot of core game rules stuffed into a small space. All of the exceptions and such (the stuff that normally eats up most of the rules) are on the warscrolls. They really never went away (that much). The GW games have always been easy to boil down to their core elements. Back in 40K 5e days, I did just that - condensed essentially the whole game to four pages:

Lets be honest, Most of people complaining would have complained just as much about a updated 9th edition that streamlined the rules as well. I think the system is interesting and there are some nice balancing mechanics with the model count and sudden death missions. I reserve final judgement until I get a few games in.

As for Kings of War, plenty of people have switched over and have used their GW models. If more people move over, the company will sell their rule book and nothing else. Eventually, that game will die out just like the previous version of WFB.

At best there's a "game construction kit", with four pages of rules and no points/army construction rules/balancing mechanism of any kind.

If you're willing to do quite a lot of work devising a balancing mechanism you'll THEN have a very shallow tabletop game that consistently devolves into a giant mass in the center of the board. Manoeuver, flanking, all gone.

The clock is now ticking down the last days of Warhammer, before GW jettisons the whole money-losing lot. Age of Sigmar is like "Dreadfleet 2"; they'll be dumping the unsold stock into landfill.

Far better than devising your own rules to make this Age of Sigmar travesty sort-of function, is to go with one of the established alternate systems. Kings of War, whose second edition is coming out in August and was created by former GW game designers, is about to see its sales skyrocket.

Well...maybe.

It is a risk. But then again, last year when the rumors about a new fantasy edition were being discussed, one of the rumors included discontinuing the game entirely. After all, sales sucked. I could find a few fantasy players here and there, but 40k is everywhere and is easy to find players (and it's a fun game).

I played a few fantasy games, I have about 2500 points of Chaos Daemons. It was fun, but I could not say that the flanking and movement added that much to the game. I may not be alone in that assessment, based on the dusty stock sitting at my local game shops.

As far as balancing goes, why not just choose total wounds? As an example, a game where each side is allowed a total of 30 wounds of models in whatever combo.

Kings of War 2e may be good and I may pick up the rule book. But it won't be a long term success if GW discontinues making models.

As for me, I picked up a couple boxes of lizard men today, because I was always kind of interested in that faction, just didn't feel like spending $50 on an army book, plus buying a lord, a few troop boxes, etc just to get to a decent point value.

As it is now, you can have a fun, playable game super cheap with any faction, not just the ones in the starter box.

Maybe it will fail miserably. Maybe KoW will keep it alive, since there are no Warhammer Age of Signmar rule books or army books to collect dust. Maybe "Advanced Warhammer" is being planned.

But maybe a free ruleset and free miniature rules is the beginning of a new age of minis wargaming. It gives the new player more choices at a lower price.

Lets be honest, Most of people complaining would have complained just as much about a updated 9th edition that streamlined the rules as well. I think the system is interesting and there are some nice balancing mechanics with the model count and sudden death missions. I reserve final judgement until I get a few games in.

As for Kings of War, plenty of people have switched over and have used their GW models. If more people move over, the company will sell their rule book and nothing else. Eventually, that game will die out just like the previous version of WFB.

People don't have such a huge problem with the simplicity of the rules, just the utter lack of balance. It's completely broken on sight.

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As far as balancing goes, why not just choose total wounds? As an example, a game where each side is allowed a total of 30 wounds of models in whatever combo.

I dunno man, I thought the same thing about the wounds idea but it just doesn't really work. The whole concept of 'play as many models as you have' is just completely baked into the rules, there's no escaping it. You have single model units that can summon essentially an entire army every turn of the game (if you have the models).

I appreciate them doing something 'brave', but it's just so wrong headed, it boggles the mind.

It's just simply: whoever has the most models of the best units wins.

Yeah, you can say: well, winning isn't everything. Of course. But a lot of the fun of playing any game surely comes from the challenge of playing well. If the balance is gone completely: if you win, or you lost, did you play well, or not? Who really knows?

It's almost like they simply forgot the fundamental tenents of what makes games fun, and instead just wrote 'have fun by dong s silly dance, haha' onto some of the cards to make up for it. Because Munchkin sells well 'so let's do that'.

As far as balancing goes, why not just choose total wounds? As an example, a game where each side is allowed a total of 30 wounds of models in whatever combo.

You must surely be aware that this doesn't work. A lowly goblin armed with a pointy stick has one wound. A heavily armoured Chaos Warrior with a halberd or great weapon has only two, but is worth many, many more than two goblins.

Worse, High Elf Phoenix Guard (Two attacks; hits on 3+; wounds on 3+; armour save of 4+) has one wound. So does a Goblin with a handweapon (One attack; hits on 5+; wounds on 5+; armour save of 6+).

Wounds won't do it. Folks are already fumbling around trying to find formulas that factor in all of the other statistics, but general sentiment is that math alone won't do it. Special rules (some of which kick in after x models in the unit) mean you need to start from scratch and assign point values unit by unit... something GW should have done in the first place.

Kaleljorson7 wrote:

As it is now, you can have a fun, playable game super cheap with any faction, not just the ones in the starter box.

The game is not playable. There's no way to establish what forces are balanced, so your best prospect is to put down some lumps of stuff and then observe as the stronger army wins. The game literally says that each player should just keep putting down units until they decide to stop, or have run out of space; then play.

Most reports show that without any reward for flanking, games just descend into massive pile-ups in the middle of the board, and then it's all about who rolls best with their buckets of dice. Anything resembling tactics is completely out the window.

Further: several armies (Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings, Chaos Warriors, Chaos Daemons; I may be missing others) have the ability to summon new units onto the board. Already people have noticed that it's absurdly easy for a single Greater Daemon to summon another Greater Daemon, which can then immediately summon another, and that another, and so on... as long as, when rolling two dice, at least one of them comes up 4+.

Without points or other army construction rules to guide players to balanced forces, or any semblance of playtesting to shake out such obvious game-destroying loopholes, the game just isn't playable out of the box. It's as if Axis and Allies just came with some components and rules for game mechanics, but no setup instructions; it merely advised players to take as many infantry, tanks, planes, and bombers as they liked for each nation.

There are some good rules in Age of Sigmar. They've done some cool things with new special rules for existing units that have really shaken up some of the dusty mechanics. I really like the powerful profiles for large monsters that degrade as the monster takes wounds. There's potential there... but it's all out the window without a point system.

The box comes with some great models, and GW will sell many copies to 40K players who want to convert them to 40K Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, and Chaos Cultists. Other copies will be sold in the glow of just being something new. Beyond that, as people learn that the facade is empty... nothing.

AoS is perfetly playable, because it is made to be played with all the scenarios in the book (96pages) in the box.There will be further scenarios, hundreds of them, as part of new campains later.Then later, there will be a system to build a "competitive" force and special rules for tournament play.But as it is, it is perfectly playable, but it's a game to be played with friends, to follow campaign in this new world, with easy to learn and to understand rules.

On the one hand . . . I have a huge dwarf army so this sucks. I'll have to just play another game or keep play 8th. Not that I even really play, I just paint, but I paint because someday I can play . . .

On the other, I want to use Bretonians in a more warmachine sized game without needing to invest in a whole huge army, so maybe they'll clean this up and I can do that!

This starter set is what it is: a starter set. A beginning box of a brand new game, with new minis.For the existing armies, it is for sure problematic... GW provide warscrolls for older armies, but it's just to help people testing the new rules. This new game is not designed for older minis.Problem is that today, the game is not out, but people already want it to be as it will be in a few months of years.Just keep waiting, there will be further expansions, with new troops, new armies, and more rules. But it will never be the 300 pages rulebook of the old V8.It's a new game. The start is slow in order to help new players. See, you have for now few minis and few rules, so it is easy for a new player or an older player who dont' want to play for 4 hours or to have to paint 150 minis in order to play.